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Frontend is what will get you. The kids have decided everything now needs to be compiled and transpiled so you won't be able to avoid the hassle of frontend dev

Frontend is what will get you. The kids have decided everything now needs to be compiled and transpiled so you won't be able to avoid the hassle of frontend development. If you want to avoid all of that then Flutter/Dart might be a good option: https://dart.dev/web https://dart.dev/web. But this is just me giving random advice. I tried Dart for a while and it's a nice language, no worse than all the other contenders when it comes to web development.

cercatrova 5y ago
Flutter is cool but not ready for the web, much as Google wants to label their web support as "stable"
- holonomically 5y ago
  What's missing?
  - sgt 5y ago
    Slow scrolling, is a major issue. Hard to solve. Flutter is great for native iOS and Android though.
  - jeroenhd 5y ago
    In my experience: performance. Even Google's Flutter apps lag horribly in Firefox and feel slow and wonky in Chromium. The development framework is pretty nice with the way you can share code between native and web, but the end result is just lacking.
  - Mikeb85 5y ago
    The performance is terrible.
    - holonomically 5y ago
      I looked at the flutter gallery and it looks like they just compile everything to js files and paint the widgets on a canvas element. Would be interesting to know if they're investing any effort in different backends like WASM. Would probably solve their performance problems. Canvas is obviously a sensible option for rendering but it looks like it might be another reason why their performance isn't great.
      - mhoad 5y ago
        They are actually pretty active on the WASM GC group because yeah I think that is the exact plan in the future to ship Flutter web apps as WASM rather than JS.
        holonomically 5y ago
        That's good news. Looking forward to the performance improvements.
nnoitra 5y ago
Yup, everything is a constanatly changing fix on top of broken JS and a broken architecture.
Zababa 5y ago
> If you want to avoid all of that then Flutter/Dart might be a good option: https://dart.dev/web https://dart.dev/web. I don't get your point, Dart is also compiled to JavaScript.
- holonomically 5y ago
  It reduces the effort of learning different frameworks for the frontend and the backend. You use one language that includes simple interoperatbility between the frontend and the backend. It will still obviously need to be compiled into a format that browsers can work with but if you're gonna use a framework anyway then Dart/Flutter is a reasonable choice (modulo performance issues as mentioned by others in this thread).
  - Zababa 5y ago
    But you could make the exact same argument for plain JavaScript? With the difference that JavaScript is way bigger in the web space.
    - holonomically 5y ago
      The point is no one uses plain javascript anymore so if you're going to use some domain specific language with its own build pipeline to generate compiled assets for the browser then Dart/Flutter is no worse than any other javascript framework.
      - Zababa 5y ago
        It is worse, because very few people use it, and the performance on the frontend is terrible.
        holonomically 5y ago
        My point is the frontend web stack is already very complicated for no good reason so using Flutter/Dart instead of dealing with webpack or whatever the latest build tool is for frontend web projects isn't that big of a difference. Dart is very easy to learn so whether a lot of people know it or not is not really an issue. Any competent programmer will be able to learn it in a few days.

cercatrova 5y ago

Flutter is cool but not ready for the web, much as Google wants to label their web support as "stable"

holonomically 5y ago
What's missing?
- sgt 5y ago
  Slow scrolling, is a major issue. Hard to solve. Flutter is great for native iOS and Android though.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  In my experience: performance. Even Google's Flutter apps lag horribly in Firefox and feel slow and wonky in Chromium. The development framework is pretty nice with the way you can share code between native and web, but the end result is just lacking.
- Mikeb85 5y ago
  The performance is terrible.
  - holonomically 5y ago
    I looked at the flutter gallery and it looks like they just compile everything to js files and paint the widgets on a canvas element. Would be interesting to know if they're investing any effort in different backends like WASM. Would probably solve their performance problems. Canvas is obviously a sensible option for rendering but it looks like it might be another reason why their performance isn't great.
    - mhoad 5y ago
      They are actually pretty active on the WASM GC group because yeah I think that is the exact plan in the future to ship Flutter web apps as WASM rather than JS.
      - holonomically 5y ago
        That's good news. Looking forward to the performance improvements.

nnoitra 5y ago

Yup, everything is a constanatly changing fix on top of broken JS and a broken architecture.

Zababa 5y ago

> If you want to avoid all of that then Flutter/Dart might be a good option: https://dart.dev/web https://dart.dev/web. I don't get your point, Dart is also compiled to JavaScript.

holonomically 5y ago
It reduces the effort of learning different frameworks for the frontend and the backend. You use one language that includes simple interoperatbility between the frontend and the backend. It will still obviously need to be compiled into a format that browsers can work with but if you're gonna use a framework anyway then Dart/Flutter is a reasonable choice (modulo performance issues as mentioned by others in this thread).
- Zababa 5y ago
  But you could make the exact same argument for plain JavaScript? With the difference that JavaScript is way bigger in the web space.
  - holonomically 5y ago
    The point is no one uses plain javascript anymore so if you're going to use some domain specific language with its own build pipeline to generate compiled assets for the browser then Dart/Flutter is no worse than any other javascript framework.
    - Zababa 5y ago
      It is worse, because very few people use it, and the performance on the frontend is terrible.
      - holonomically 5y ago
        My point is the frontend web stack is already very complicated for no good reason so using Flutter/Dart instead of dealing with webpack or whatever the latest build tool is for frontend web projects isn't that big of a difference. Dart is very easy to learn so whether a lot of people know it or not is not really an issue. Any competent programmer will be able to learn it in a few days.